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08th Nov 2023

Diver shares incredible reality of hollow island completely blacked out on Google Maps

Callum Boyle

Scary stuff

Google Maps users appear to have discovered a mysterious island that looks to be completely hollow.

Pictures show that on the outside of the island there is a lighter-coloured sea and even some waves crashing against what appears to be beaches.

The centre of the island tells a different story though. Images make it look as if it has been manually blacked out – something that Google Maps occasionally does when they have places they don’t have access to, or people don’t want them to know what’s going on there, or just don’t like being on Google Maps.

Those who first discovered the island were unsure of where it was located, leading to many joking that they had found the island from popular E4 show, Lost.

Back in 2021, social media users announced that the mystery location is actually an uninhabited island called Vostok Island.

Hollow island Google Maps

It belongs to the Republic of Kiribati, a country located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

A YouTube video, published by nature journalists at National Geographic over 14 years ago then went viral.

Published back in 2009, diver Enric Sala claims he has just enjoyed one of the best dives of his life while enjoying the coral reefs surrounding Vostok Island.

“Well, we just came back from a dive on Vostok Island,” he says. “I just did the very best dive of my life.”

Salva goes on to say that he spotted “sharks, schools of jags, barracuda and surgeon fish”.

Vostok Island is still blacked out on Google Maps, leading to many conspiracy theories which include the idea that it is a “censored” destination.

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